Things We Lost in the Fire

Steve Albini engineered the fifth album at Electrical Audio in Chicago, with additional recording at Third Ear in Minneapolis by Tom Herbers. A wider circle plays on it: Mark De Gli Antoni on piano, keyboards and sampler, Daniel Huffman on guitar, loops and noises, a string group of cello, double bass, violin and viola, and a trumpeter, Robert Weston. Hollis Mae Sparhawk is credited with squeaks and yells. The Dinosaur Act single came out in 2000, and its two B-sides, Overhead and Don't Carry It All, were added to overseas editions and to the vinyl. The LP is three-sided, with the lyrics etched into the fourth.

Parker sings lead on Laser Beam, Embrace and In Metal, and Untitled is a 46-second instrumental. Metacritic scores it 87. Pitchfork ranked it 117 among the best albums of the 2000s and 14 among its thirty best dream pop albums, the Guardian placed it 93 on its 100 best albums of the century in a 2019 poll, and NME put it at 36 among its darkest albums. In 2006 Low played it in full in the All Tomorrow's Parties Don't Look Back series. The Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez named a story collection after it.